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valuable in the body? 10. Name some common mistakes that people make in selecting their food. II. Why should one eat a variety of foods? 12. Why should one learn to do this while young?

Suggestions and topics for development: Whether an animal that stays outdoors in the winter or one that is kept in a warm stable needs more food, and why. The kind of food eaten by the inhabitants of cold countries, and why. The kind of foods needed in especially large amounts by growing animals and children. Where a chick in an egg gets the lime for building its skeleton. The minerals needed by the body and where they are obtained. How food is stored in the body. Why a person is thin after sickness. What a frog or a bear lives on while it is sleeping through the winter. Why a person who is doing hard work needs large amounts of food.

The teacher should learn as much as possible about the eating habits of the pupils, and if any of them are given to eating large quantities of sweets or lean meats, or are falling into other errors of diet, they should have clearly presented to them the fact that the body demands a balanced ration and that it will not receive such a ration from a diet of this sort.

The teacher who understands chemistry will find profit in reading Chittenden's The Nutrition of Man, published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. Ritchie's Primer of Physiology and Human Physiology contain much additional matter concerning the nutrition of the body.

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FIG. 8. Grains furnish the body with heat and strength. They are the cheapest of all food and are used the world over. Vegetables furnish the needed bulk for the food.

DURING a strike in Chicago a poor woman spent her last ten cents for lettuce to feed her hungry family. If she had bought dried beans, she would have had seventy-one times as much food for the same money; or by spending five cents for bread and five cents for milk she could have taken home to her children forty-one times as much nourishment. She did not understand that the body must have a certain amount of building material and a certain amount of food for heat and strength, and that the various food materials are not equally valuable for these purposes. She had not learned that in mutton a pound of building material costs $1.50, while in corn meal it can be bought for 27

cents; that the amount of heating and strengthening material that can be bought in sugar for 6 cents costs 54 cents in cabbage; that the amount of fat that can be bought in fat salt pork for 10 cents costs in butter 61 cents; that one pound of oatmeal will give as much heat and strength as seventeen pounds of tomatoes or nearly seven pounds of bananas.

How to select foods. It is often a mistake to buy beefsteak at twenty-five cents a pound when for half the money cheaper cuts of meat can be bought that will give as much nourishment or even more. A man who does hard work must have a great deal of the food that gives strength. It is not necessary for him to get his strength from expensive foods like meat and eggs when he can get the same strength at much less cost from bread and potatoes. Variety is necessary, both to keep up the appetite and for the health; but the housekeeper who has only a moderate amount of money to spend for the nourishment which her family needs cannot afford to provide variety by purchasing expensive and out-ofseason foods that have little nutriment in them. Instead of doing this, she should learn what foods will supply nourishment to the body in a cheap form, and then watch the markets and study how to provide a variety of foods of this kind. All this requires intelligence and care, but the subject is worthy of the most serious study; for the proper feeding of the body is the most important of all

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FIG. 9. Comparative amounts of nourishment that a given sum of money—e.g., ten cents will purchase in different foods.

the problems of hygiene and the greatest economic question in the world.

The table on page 17 shows the relative costs of building material and of heat-giving and strengthgiving material in some of our common foods.

Questions: I. Into what two great classes may foods be divided (pages 10 and 11)? 2. What mistake do people of moderate means often make in buying their foods? 3. Name some foods that are valuable for giving heat and strength to the body. 4. Name some foods that are valuable for building material as well as for heat and strength. 5. What do potatoes supply to the body? 6. What food could a person eat with potatoes to give his body building material, heat, and strength? 7. If a person lives on fruits and vegetables, what does his body lack? 8. From the table on page 17 select a number of foods which will furnish building materials at a low price. 9. Select some foods that will furnish heat and strength to the body at a low price. 10. Select foods that will furnish both building materials and heat and strength at a low price. 11. Which should you consider the cheapest food in the list on page 17? 12. The most expensive? Suggestions and topics for development: Discuss the nutritive value of commonly used foods. Many American families are underfed, and the pupils should be made to understand the possibility of supplying the needs of the body with low-priced foods. Keep in mind the value of those foods that enable us to eat with them large quantities of other cheap foods like bread.

Obtain from the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., Farmers' Bulletin No. 391, on the Economical Use of Meat in the Home. In the Appendix to Ritchie's Human Physiology (the fourth book of this series) the analyses and costs of a number of foods are given. For a complete list of the analyses and comparative costs of foods, see Bulletin No. 28 of the United States Department of Agriculture, which may be obtained for ten cents from the Superintendent of Public Documents, Washington, D. C.

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